Every year for as long as Rebecca could remember, it had been the same—midnight mass on Christmas Eve, matins on Christmas morning, thank-you letters to be written while Winifred cooked lunch, and the afternoon spent receiving the first of the endless round of annual visitors. There was plenty of good food and wine—Alfred made sure of that—and there was always a Christmas tree tall enough to reach to the ceiling, which it was Rebecca’s job to decorate on Christmas Eve. It was the nicest part of Christmas, she had always thought, unwrapping the baubles and the tinsel from their tissue paper and hanging them one by one on the branches until they sparkled like something from a fairy tale. But this year her hands trembled as she eased the tiny bells and globes from their wrappings, and she could not concentrate on what she was doing. She had arranged to meet a boy—not just any boy, but Ted Hall, who had sung ‘Burlington Bertie’ in the concert party, and walked home with her afterwards.
